Todd, Tim and Kellan Cook love Baseball, the Seattle Mariners and trekking around the country to visit stadiums and watch games. These are their stories. #FatherSonBaseball

Results tagged ‘ Great American Ball Park ’

We woke up at the Millennium Hotel in Cincinnati on the morning of July 6, 2013, ready for some more great Mariners baseball action. Unfortunately, we woke up to a rain soaked city. For a few hours in the morning, I could not imagine the game getting played. I was thinking rain out all the way.

We passed the morning hours by being incredibly lazy in the hotel room:

By the way, Kellan is flexing his muscles to show off the tattoo that he got at the dinosaur place the day before.

Eventually, we decided we needed to run to the parking garage to grab an umbrella. No luck. So the boys, Avi and I trekked around rainy downtown Cincinnati looking for umbrellas. On our walk, we passed by a shiny metal…thingy…that made us look like we were in a house of mirrors:

And then it was off to Skyline Chili for some traditional Cincinnati food:

It was scheduled to be a 4:10 start. We had nothing else to do. So after lunch, we headed over to the ballpark:

It stopped raining on our walk. Still, we were doubtful there would be BP. When we walked into the lobby to the Reds Hall of Fame, we were informed that the early BP tour was cancelled because the teams would not be taking BP. So this was our third Mariners game of the season and third time not getting to see the Mariners take BP. So sad.

We decided to tour the very awesome Reds Hall of Fame. Here are some random shots that explain very little about the first room you enter at the Reds Hall of Fame:

Note the big Ken Griffey, Jr. autograph on the wall. Very nice.

Ringing this entire room there are autographed baseball cards from what appears to be almost everyone who has ever played for the Reds. When you first walk in the door, there are autographed cards from the very beginning of the organization, and it just moves through the years as you walk around the room. Relatively near the end, we found Griff (far right below)…

…there is also a computer on the wall on which you can look up past Reds (middle aboe is the info page for Griff).

Down the hall, Avi found a board for visitors to leave their own autographs. Avi had the bright idea for us to sign in blue sharpie, which stood out in the sea of mostly black ink:

I signed for Kellan since, you know, he was 2 at the time and can’t sign his own name. By the way, I’ve historically worn number 18 so I signed an “18” next to my name like I’m a Big Leaguer. Tim signed his “55,” the number he has worn every season of his Little League career to date. Kellan wanted a number of his own and he pulled “6” out of thin air. Avi had no number to add to his signature, which was quite sad. Sorry, Avi.

Down at the end of the hall, I took this picture out of the window:

It looks cool out there. We have to check out that area next time we’re in Cincinnati.

Before heading upstairs, we headed into the baseball stadium designed auditorium…

…and watched a cool little video about the history of the Reds.

The stairs and the entire area upstairs was crazy because there were some former Reds signing autographs up there, and a long line of Reds fans started on the stairs and ran all the way to the other end of the building where the payers were signing.

We had to wait for a break in the line to get this picture of the boys…

…with a whole bunch of Joe Morgan’s rings.

Upstairs there are some interactive attractions for the kids, including this pitching set up:

Behind home plate you can look through the umpire’s face mask and call balls and strikes. On the other side, there is a sensor on the wall that calls actual balls and strikes based on your pitches from the mound.

In another room, there is a little play area for the kids:

There was a crazy kid in there who was hyping Tim and Kellan up, until he hurt himself by falling through a hole in the ceiling/floor – he fell from the upper level of theplay area back down to the lower level.

In other news, check out Avi’s cool baseball glove chair.

Here are some other random areas in the upstairs portion of the Reds Hall of Fame:

Avi and Tim celebrated with a bunch of Big Red Machine statues:

Above to the left, that is Tim and Ken Griffey, Sr. (formerly known simply as Ken Griffey during his days with the Reds).

At the far end of the upstairs, we finally found the former Reds who were signing autographs (I still have no clue who they were)…

…and we walked (quickly) through the Hall of Fame gallery.

We walked quickly through the gallery because I noticed out the window that THE GATES WERE OPEN!

I had no clue what was going on. We knew when the gates were supposed to open, and it wasn’t supposed to be for another 10-15 minutes…or so we though. So we scurried out of the Hall of Fame and into the ballpark.

When we reached the field…

…there were absolutely no players anywhere to be found. The frustrating thing is that there were a bunch of spike marks all over the warning track. The Mariners had already been out there throwing and we missed seeing them. So, so, so very sad.

We sat around and did absolutely nothing for a long, long time. Actually, not nothing. Avi and Tim talked over how to score a baseball game:

And Kellan took a half hour nap on my shoulders:

Avi eventually went off to explore the ballpark a bit. Tim, Kellan and I headed out to the Mariners bullpen in RF…

…when reclamation project Jeremy Bonderman prepared for his final game as a Mariner (maybe his final game of his career):

See Danny Farquhar (No. 40) in the bullpen in that last picture? He came over and ended up talking to a guy next to us for a while. He signed a few baseballs and tossed them up to the guy. After they finished chatting and Farquhar returned to the bullpen, the guy mentioned that he was Farquhar’s little league coach. I thought that was pretty cool.

It was also pretty cool when Jason Phillips came over and tossed us a couple baseballs after Bonderman finished warming up for the game:

Thanks, Jason!

Jason is always a cool dude. It’s always great to see him.

Something else cool happened when we were over by the bullpen. Alice Cooper threw out the ceremonial first pitch:

Check out Alice’s awesome choice of jersey number! 18! Excellent.

We hung out by the bullpen until just a few minutes before game time. From there, we headed around the batters’ eye on our way to our seats in the LF upper deck. Check out these tall guys we passed on our way:

This game started almost exactly like the day before (unfortunately, it didn’t end like the previous day’s game).

The boys and I went to get some nachos before heading to our seats. We walked around the back side of the nacho stand to watch the first pitch:

Like the day before, when we returned to our seats after watching the first batter of the game, the Mariners were leading 2-0. Endy Chavez had followed Miller with a single, and then Kyle Seager hit a 2-run bomb. Excellent.

Here was our view from the back of section 405:

We had a great time clowning around in the back row:

And, of course, eating some ice cream:

Yes, we ate all of our food at this game out of helmets:

Here’s something you don’t see everyday from the bleachers of an MLB stadium…

…a coal barge passing by RF.

Here’s something else you don’t see everyday at an MLB stadium (unless you are me)…

…an ice cream-drip-stained Mariners hat. I’ve committed to wearing this hat to every MLG game we attend until I have worn it at all 30 MLB ballparks. It has been to 29 of the current ballparks, all but Chase Field. The plan is to get to Chase Field again next season and then retire this trusty old hat.

The actual game action is too sad to track in detail here. This Dustin Ackley double…

…was a highlight. But there were many lowlights. The Mariners got creamed.

But we managed to have lots of fun anyway up high in the LF bleachers:

Check out this huge load of stuff I was carrying:

That’s a pretty standard amount of stuff for us. During April games, my backpack is even bigger because I stuff it with jackets and other warm clothes too.

Bottom Right: Mike Zunino hitting a line drive…that was caught for an out.

After each of the Mariners 14 strike outs (11 at the hands of Reds starter Mat Latos), these things shot fire:

Kellan and I went and explored this restaurant down the LF line:

I believe it is called the “Machine Room.” It is pretty cool looking for a sports bar, but I’m not sure why you would want to go to a sports bar WHILE YOU ARE AT a Major League game.

Toward the end of the game, we took a walk. On the way out of our section, Kellan wouldn’t get down from my shoulders, so here is a picture of only Tim at the front of section 406:

Avi went off looking at stuff. The boys and I headed over to the dinosaur area, but it was closed. So we went to this standing room area…

…, which is behind home plate just slightly off to the 1B side. As you can see from the big 9-screen-in-one-screen above the concourse in that last picture, Danny Farquhar came in to pitch the bottom of the eighth inning for the Mariners, and he gave up four runs. It was ugly.

The silver lining was that the Reds fans felt comfortable with a 13-4 lead heading toward the ninth inning and they took off in droves. We noticed a ton of open seats on the 3B side so we headed over there.

This was our view in the top of the ninth:

When the game ended, home plate umpire Alan Porter walked right below us into the umpires’ tunnel. He paid no attention to us or any of the other fans.

We headed down to the other side of the dugout. As the Mariners relievers headed toward the dugout, I snapped this picture:

As you can see, Tom Wilhelmsen is in the process of swinging his arm back to underhand a baseball to Tim. I didn’t notice this at all when I was taking the picture. I snapped the picture and then lowered my camera to find a ball flying right at us. Tim snatched it up with no problem.

Thanks, Tom!

We got a final group shot before heading back to the hotel and our car:

Then we drove until around midnight…

…and stopped at a hotel in Triadelphia, West Virginia, where they had this cool pancake machine at the free breakfast the next morning:

Before driving the rest of the way home the following morning, we stopped at Cabela’s to look at some live fish and stuff animals:

We had the most fun with the big bad bears:

It was another great weekend of baseball and another excellent road trip with Avi.

For months, we had been looking forward to the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Our Mariners were scheduled to take on the Reds at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. The original plan was that my folks would come out for the series and my wife would join us too. But through a series of plan squashing issues, neither my folks nor Colleen could end up making the trip. My folks were out weeks in advance, but Colleen was going to join us right up until July 3rd. We picked out our hotels and bought our game tickets with her input…but then something more important came up that she had to attend to and had to drop out.

On very short notice, we were happy to have Avi Miller…

…join our traveling roadtrip caravan.

The plan was to see the M’s in Cincinnati on July 5-6. We headed to Pittsburgh around 11:00 a.m. on the Fourth. There was a big “Regatta” party-thingy going on in Pittsburgh. We started out by playing some catch in the park:

We cooled off in this big fountain:

We watched a pretty cool BMX show:

For the record, that guy jumping above is traveling from left to right…and Avi wasn’t impressed until the very end when the last two bikers did back flips.

Next, we met up with famous Pittsburgh couple, Matt Peaslee and Erin Wozniak, and watched a boat race on the river. This guy captaining the No. 10 boat easily won the race:

Next, it was off to Moe’s for dinner:

And then we finished off the night with some fireworks:

The next morning, July 5, 2013, we were off to Cincinnati. Neither Kellan nor Avi had ever been to Great American Ball Park (or Cincinnati in general). While both of them loved the ballpark, Avi contained his enthusiasm while Kellan couldn’t even stand still for a quick picture:

Oh, by the way, this game marked Kellan’s 50th MLB game and Great American Ball Park his 16th MLB stadium.

The Reds have an extra early BP “tour.” You pay some extra cash at the Reds Hall of Fame (which is an awesome Hall of Fame that you should definitely check out), and you get in to BP super-duper early. You also get a pass into the Reds HOF and a cool Ted Kluzinsky statue.

After buying our tickets, the boys posed for some pictures with Reds Mickey Mouse…

…and Reds Statute of Liberty.

Just outside the Reds HOF, we found this excellent statue of Johnny Bench:

(Note: Tim is using a brochure as a catcher’s mitt in that picture).

Around 4:21’ish, our BP tour guide took us inside the stadium…

…and told us what would happen once we went out to the field. Essentially, for the first half hour we would be confined to right field. Then the first base line would open up for us (and I think all Reds season tickets holders. At that point, we could stay in RF or we could head down to the Reds dugout in search of autographs. Eventually, the gates would open to the general public and we would be able to go anywhere.

When we headed out to RF, Joe Saunders was throwing a bullpen session:

We watched Saunders while Avi went off to watch BP. After Saunders wrapped up his throwing session, Saunders flipped his warm up ball up to Tim between the narrow gap between the seats and the net over the top of the bullpen.

Thanks, Joe!

For the rest of Reds BP, we hung out here:

You can’t tell in that picture, but we were in a little partial row pressed up against the batters’ eye. Spots like that are always ideal for us because the natural barrier on one side helps keep Kellan from trying to wander away.

Reds BP was interesting. As far as I could tell, they hit a grand total of two homeruns. I might have missed some…but who knows. I truly only saw two homeruns the entire time. Meanwhile, all of the Reds were wearing BP pullovers and I had no clue who most of them were…

…but then I saw a familiar face, Mariners bullpen catcher Jason Phillips. I hadn’t seen him in the bullpen when Saunders was throwing. He must have been hiding in the corner. We exchanged our customary tip of the caps as he walked across the field with Saunders.

Eventually, I recognized two Reds in the outfield. First, I noticed Shin-Soo Choo shagging balls in CF. When Choo made a catch on a sinking liner in CF, I called out an extended “CHOOOOOOOO!” He turned around and fired the ball to me. About thirty second later, he shagged another ball and it tossed it to Tim.

Double thanks, Shin-Soo!

The boys posed with their Choo-Balls and the Great American Ball Park sign for the MyGameBalls.com photo scavenger hunt:

Nearby in RCF, MyGameBalls.com 2013 top ten snagger Rocco Sinisi was toiling away and doing his thing. Rocco is the MyGameBalls.com career leader for Great American Ball Park and a photo with him was good for scavenger hunt bonus points. Although we’d been chatting a bit off and on during BP, we decided to get a photo with Rocco early in BP just in case we forgot to or didn’t get a chance to do so later. So here is our first attempt at the Rocco/GABP bonus photo:

Over the past several years, I haven’t really followed but have admired Aroldis Chapman from afar. He seems like a good guy and, heck, he throws balls at crazy fast speeds.

Amongst the sea of unrecognizable Reds in the outfield, I eventually noticed that Chapman was hanging out in straightaway right field. When I spotted Chapman way over there in RF, I shouted out a loud, “AROOOOOOLDIS!” This prompted Aroldis to look over and exchange waves with us.

See where Aroldis was:

He was way over there. Carter Capps was “way over there” too – way over across the field from this throwing partner out on the LF. Capps was firing seeds across the field. It was impressive.

A little while later, someone hit a grounder through the infield and into somewhat shallow RF. Aroldis sauntered over and grabbed the ball. I called out his name again (you know, we were buddies after that exchange of waves) and he threw the ball all the way from RF to my glove waiting in CF.

Thanks, Aroldis!

Hey, remember those two BP homeruns I mentioned? Jay Bruce…

…hit one of them right to me and I made the catch on the fly. Thanks to Rocco for identifying Bruce for me later in the day based on that last photo.

See that bat laying on the ground in the photo above to the right? When Reds BP ended, we headed around the RF foul pole and toward home plate. On the way, I took a photo (that photo) of a bat (that bat) sitting on the ground in the Mariners’ bullpen. I took the photo for the sole purpose of zooming in on the picture to see whose name was on the bat. So click on that photo and check it out: it was Jay Bruce’s bat. That’s odd.

As we approached the infield, the Reds grounds crew removed the cage and screens from the field. What was this all about? It was very confusing. It was also a bit of a bummer because this was only our second Mariners game of the season and the Mariners didn’t take BP before our first game either.

Anyway, we decided to grab some food for the boys and head over to the third base side…

…where the Mariners’ position players were stretching. As I took some photos, Tim munched down a hot dog and Kellan worked away on a big soft pretzel:

Funny side note: Kellan ate part of that pretzel while sitting on my shoulders. When he finished, I had to pick big grains of salt out of my hair for the rest of the afternoon.

The lack of BP was actually kind of cool because the Mariners did a modified version of the old fashioned “taking infield and outfield.”

While we were watching our M’s, a Reds employee with a camera came over and asked if he could take our picture. “Sure,” I responded. After he snapped the pic, I asked why he wanted the picture. “It’s for the Mariners,” he responded. Later in the day, we found out that the Mariners tweeted the picture to over 130,000 people. Here’s the M’s tweet, and here’s another look at it:

After playing catch with Hisashi Iwakuma, Felix Hernandez signed a bunch of autographs:

Tim got him to sign the Jay Bruce homerun ball.

Thanks, King Felix!

I asked Felix why the M’s weren’t taking BP. He said they had got into Cincinnati around 2:30 in the morning after playing a road game in Texas the previous night and decided not to take BP.

Following the M’s warm ups, we got a better photo with Rocco:

And then we wandered around a bit and got some pictures with the Reds piggy bank…

…and a big bobblehead burger guy.

Before the game, the Reds honored Homer Bailey…

…for throwing a no-hitter against the Giants three days earlier.

Here was our view for most of this game, about three rows from the top of section 402:

In the couple of games Tim and I had previously attended at Great American, we’d sat in RF and lower LF. We once visited the upper deck in LF, but never watched game from up there. I’ll tell you though, I loved it. For an “upper deck,” it’s not very high up there and the view is great. Plus, we had a nice view of Kentucky across the river and a great breeze. As an added bonus, at the back of the upper deck, there are covered seats to either shade you from the sun or keep you dry in the rain. The LF upper deck at Great American Ball Park definitely gets my seal of approval.

The pitching match-up was Aaron Harang vs. Mike Leake. I wasn’t a big fan of the match-up. But sometimes a struggling pitcher can pull out a better-than-normal performance when facing his old team. That’s what I hoped for from Harang.

We dropped our stuff at our seats and watched the first pitch from Leake to Brad Miller:

And then Kellan and I headed down the stairs on our way to get some ice cream for the boys. As we walked down the upper deck stairs, Miller laced the ball down the RF line and coasted in for an easy triple. A great start for the M’s!

As Kellan and I ducked into a men’s restroom, Nick Franklin stepped to the plate and blasted a 2-run homer. Kellan and I had no clue this had happened. But when we got back to the ice cream place we saw the score – 2-0 Mariners!

When we got back to the seats…

…, Avi informed us about the Franklin homerun.

Harang pitched a scoreless bottom of the first. Then, Michael “The Condor” Saunders hit a leadoff bomb in the top of the second:

Here’s one of the reasons I like Brandon Phillips:

Check out that big smile clearly visible from the top of the upper deck in LCF! That’s how I like to see guys playing the game, like my favorite player, Ken Griffey, Jr.

In case you were wondering, here was the Mariners outfield for the day:

Michael Saunders in RF, Dustin Ackley in CF and Rauuuuuul Ibanez in LF.

Here’s a funny picture with no backstory, just a bunch of funny guys:

And a couple loving brothers:

Tim and Kellan either spend their time trying to annoy one another or hugging and telling each other how much they love the other. Generally, they act like wonderful loving brothers while at baseball games and reserve their annoying each other for play time at home.

Much to my delight, Harang was, indeed, putting a strong performance together against his old squad:

Multiple times before the game and once during the game, I took the boys here…

…for a little kid fun. That table looks like it is covered in sand, but it is really a mixture of different colored bits of rubber chopped up into little grains. There were digging tools and dinosaur skeletons that the kids could dig up. The two big dinosaurs standing behind the boys in the picture above to the left felt real’ish and they moved around every couple minutes. The one on the right also laid eggs. The boys couldn’t get enough of this little dinosaur display.

Before the game started we were hanging out in dinosaur area and another guy wearing Mariners gear asked me if he’d seen us at Pittsburgh. We chatted about it and, indeed, he had seen us in Pittsburgh. His name is Greg. He’s a NW Mariners fan transplanted to Detroit. We’ve kept in touch a bit since running into each other several times this weekend. Good guy, and good Mariners fan.

Last time we were in Cincinnati we failed to get a good picture of the batters’ eye boat. So, we got this one:

Back up in section 402, the ballpark looked even better as the sun went down:

Avi agreed, this place is beautiful:

Tim and Kellan both took a bunch of pictures during this game and weekend. Here’s Kellan’s funniest picture:

I should mention that the Mariners took a 4-0 lead in the top of the fourth inning when Michael Saunders hit a sacrifice fly to LF scoring Kyle Seager.

In the top of the fifth inning, Brad Miller made some Great American Ball Park history when he hit his second triple of the game. In over 800 games, it was the first time that a player had hit two triples in a game at GABP. Pretty cool.

In the bottom of the fifth, Shin-Soo Choo hit an RBI-double to put the Reds on the board.

In the bottom of the sixth, the Reds capped the scoring for the day when Joseph Votto blasted a leadoff homerun to CF. That made the score 4-2 Mariners.

Late in the game, we got split up from Avi for a while. When we connected on the phone, he said he was in a SRO area near home plate with Rocco. We decided we should go over there. Thinking (correctly) that we might not make it back to section 402, we got a picture of Tim at the bottom of 402 on our way out (Kellan didn’t want to get off my shoulders to get in the picture):

This was our view in the SRO area:

When we arrived at the SRO area, Avi was nowhere to be found. Ends up, we’d left section 402 to meet up with him and he left the SRO area to meet up with him in section 402.

Eventually, we did all meet up at the SRO area. They make you stand at the top of the stairs. Eventually, we move down the stairs at stood at the corner of the cross aisle. The ushers didn’t really do anything about it so we stayed there a bit.

Heading into the bottom of the eight, the Mariner brought in Charlie Furbush who blew away Zack Cozart, Joey…

…Votto, and Brandon Phillips, 1-2-3.

When Rocco came by, he headed down the cross aisle toward the outfield. We all followed him and ended up here for the ninth inning:

Check out that guy’s Johnny Bench jersey. That’s sweet.

Ollie Perez nailed down a great Mariners Win!

We ended up in near-perfect position for a umpire ball, but didn’t get one. But when we moved to the other end of the M’s dugout, Jaime Navarro tossed this one to Tim:

Avi, the boys and I pulled up some from row seats…

…for the post-game firework show:

The very first fireworks show of Tim’s life was at Great American Ball Park and it was awesome. However, since then, we’ve seen a fireworks show at Progressive Field, and absolutely nothing stacks up to the Indians’ fireworks shows. They are incredible But this was a nice show for the boys. They love all fireworks shows.

After fireworks, we got one more picture with Rocco…

…, one more group shot of us four roadtrippers…

…, some mire image shots with these awesome mosaics…

…, and one with this cool thingy inset on the floor of the concourse behind home plate:

And then we headed off to the team store so Avi could buy a bunch of bobbleheads. In the team store, Tim posed with a huge World Series trophy:

Finally, we walked back to our hotel a few blocks away…

…where Kellan hid under a pillow, both boys acted silly for a while, and then we all called it a night.

I’ve been trying to get Tim and I to Comerica Park for a couple years now. It has never seemed to work. My original plan this season was to work it into our Texas trip back in May, but the flights just wouldn’t work. So we came up with a new plan: Fourth of July weekend road trip to Cincinnati and Detroit.

Cincinnati was up first. We hit the road in the evening on Friday, July 1st and drove to a hotel in Pittsburgh. On Saturday, July 2, 2011 we headed off to Cincinnati to take in a game in the “Ohio Cup” series – Cleveland Indians vs. Cincinnati Reds.

But the game wasn’t until 4:05 p.m., and it was only about a four hour drive to Cincinnati. No matter what, we were going to get there before the gates opened. So, when we were about 50 miles out from Cincinnati, I called Colleen and asked her to look up the address for Moeller High School – Ken Griffey, Jr.’s high school (and, oh, yeah, Barry Larkin’s too)!

First, we pulled up to the scruffy looking practice baseball field (The Tom Fitz Athletic Fields) behind the school…

…where I imagined Griffey playing ball as a teenager. We ran the “bases” (there weren’t really any bases) and took some lefthanded hacks (without a bat) at the plate. Ah, it felt just like we were “The Kid” himself.

Up above a hill out in right field, there were really (really!) nice looking soccer and football fields. It made me think that there must be other baseball facilities somewhere else.

Anyway, we pulled around to the front of the school and got a few pictures:

In the picture above to the right, Tim is pretending he is Griffey walking into school.

Just as we were able to leave, a guy exited the main doors (where Tim is approaching in that picture above) and started packing some stuff into a van. I ran over and asked him if he knew where the baseball team plays. He was very nice and we ended up striking up a 10 minute conversation.

It was probably obvious since we were wearing Mariners clothes and I was asking about the baseball fields, but I felt compelled to explain to him, “We’re ‘Griffey people.’” His reply was priceless: “So are we!”

It ends up that the guy was Griffey’s U.S. History teacher back in the mid-1980s. He shared a handful of Griffey stories with us that were incredibly awesome to hear. Nothing overly important or exciting. Just tidbits about Griffey the high schooler and Griffey the man returning home after being traded to the Reds in 2000. It was a cool behind the scenes glimpse at my all-time favorite ballplayer.

The least shocking story was that Griff wasn’t exactly a model student. He apparently gave a lot of “I’m gonna play professional baseball” responses when prompted by his teachers to take his schooling more seriously. They would remind him, “You know, lots of people say that, but it doesn’t work out for most.” And as his teacher told is, Griff would always assure the, “but it IS going to work out for me.”

If were really the discussions (and I have no reason to doubt it), it certainly looks like Griff proved himself right.

One other story I thought was cool to hear is that Moeller used to use a baseball field a couple miles away that was behind a Thriftway store. It had no fence and Griff would jack bombs over the outfielders that would roll and roll forever. He was so good at it that his teammates referred to the field behind the Thriftway as the “Griffway.”

Oh, yeah. And he mentioned that Griffey spent some time practicing on that scruffy field behind the school, but that’s it. He never played games there.

And with that, lets continue on to Cincinnati.

Great American Ball Park is interesting. Downtown Cincinnati (as far as I can tell) is essentially situated on a hill that runs down to the Ohio River. Route-71 comes into downtown
and cuts across downtown at 3rd Street – at the bottom of the hill – just above the river. The big downtown buildings are up the uphill side of 3rd Street and Great American Ball Park is tucked into the little space right between the buildings/3rd Street/Route-71 and the Ohio River. If you park in downtown, you have to walk across the bridge…

…to get to the stadium. (Those pictures were actually taken after the game…so everyone is walking away from the park instead of to it.) In the picture above to the right, you can see that the ballpark is tucked between two buildings. The building to the left the Reds front office and the building to the right is the main team store and the Reds (very cool) Hall of Fame.

Here is a look as you get closer to the stadium…

…and that picture to the left is a huge engraving (I guess that’s what you would call it) on the end of the front office building.

This approach leads you to the gates right behind home plate. There are a bunch of statues in the area in front of the home plate gate:

In the picture above to the right with Tim facing the statue of the pitcher, Tim explained that he was being the catcher and he was telling the pitcher what pitches to throw.

When we arrived, it was still about 20 minutes before gate opening. And it was really hot. We scooted around to the third base gate, where it was somewhat shady, and we hopped in
line. While in line, we spotted our first (of many) Griffey jerseys of the day:

After entering the ballpark and stowing our two new Dusty Baker bobblehead/toothpick holders, we headed to section 109:

The Reds were hitting, but they were almost finished, and the Indians pitchers were starting to report to the LF line to warm up and do some throwing. BP got packed quick. My hunch was that we wouldn’t come away with a baseball from GABP. But after the Indians pitchers finished up throwing, an Indians batter hit a ball behind 3B that veered over into foul
territory where an Indians pitcher fielded it right in front of us. When I asked if he could toss it up to Tim, he walked over and handed it directly to Tim.

As he walked away, I called out, “Wait! What’s your name!?” He reply, simply, “Tony!” I thought that was pretty funny. We’re on a first name basis, you know? I later checked the roster and found that Tony’s last name is Sipp.

Here is a picture of Sipp walking away from us…

…and Tim smiling for the camera with his baseball:

Thanks, Tony!

Okay. We had a ball from GABP and that was enough for us. We’d only been to this ballpark once before so it was officially time to do some exploring. We started by heading behind home plate, where we got this picture of Tim (again posing with his Tony Sipp baseball):

Tim looks pretty sweaty in that picture, but it is really water. It was so hot that we kept dousing Tim’s head with cold water.

Here is a panoramic view of Great American Ball Park from the cross aisle right behind section 121:

Next, we headed down into the seats behind the third base dugout and got this panorama from the second row of section 117:

Although no one checked our tickets when we headed down into the seats behind the dugout, I got the feeling that someone was supposed to have done so. There was hardly anyone in the seats behind dugout, but lots of people down the foul lines and in the outfield.

They definitely were checking the tickets of anyone who dared stand in the front row behind the dugout. But they did let Tim stand there long enough to get this picture:

There is a big steamboat looking thing above the batters’ eye in CF and Tim requested that we go out there and check it out. So that’s what we did…well, we tried to. You can’t actually get out onto that steamboat unless you are part of the group that has the steamboat for the game.

So we just stood around in upper deck next to the steamboat for 10-15 minutes. Here was our view:

One Indians player in CF was clearly having more fun than anyone else on the field. I had no clue who he was. The last group of hitters was only two guys and I am pretty sure they were pitchers preparing for their final interleague games. They hardly got the ball out of the infield.

But they did get one ball out to the “fun guy” in center field. He was way out there in CF. After gloving the baseball, he started walking toward another player in LCF. I didn’t say a word, but I held my glove up. As he walked, he noticed us and he threw a laser to me. It was an amazing throw considering the height and distance the ball traveled.

Here is “fun guy” and Tim with our first ever upper deck toss up:

I took pictures of the guy and tried to get a close up of his glove…where it appeared that his name was embroidered. In the best photo, I could tell the first name was “Cade” and the last name looked like it started with “Dur.” The roster told me that Chad Durbin now pitches for the Indians and Wikipedia told me that Durbin has a son named Cade. So there you go, thanks are due to Mr. Durbin.

Thanks, Chad!

This picture taken later in the day illustrates Durbin’s impressive throw:

Interesting side note, the baseball that Durbin threw up to us is a minor league baseball. It is so scuffed and dirty that it is impossible to read which MiLB league it is from, but it clearly appears to have the MiLB logo instead of the MLB logo.

Next, we headed over to the LF corner of the upper deck and got this panorama from section 406:

And then we got a picture of Tim from the same spot:

After running up to the top of the seats, we got this panorama from the top of section 406:

Next, we headed over into the infield. We headed up to the tippy-top of the stadium and found a nice spot where we could get a good picture of Tim with his Chad Durbin baseball and the Great American Ball Park sign for the MyGameBalls.com scavenger hunt:

After climbing up to the top of section 510, this is what it looked like:

Zooming in, here is a look at the batters’ eye steamboat:

Tim was not feeling the tippy-top of the upper deck. Too high. So we headed down to the upper deck concourse. I kept dousing Tim’s head with water. When we visited the restroom after leaving section 510, Tim noticed his wet hair in the mirror. Before leaving the restroom, he asked me to help him spike his hair up into a mohawk. When we headed back
into the concourse, this is what Tim’s hair looked like:

Speaking of the concourse, this is what it looks like in the upper deck behind third base at Great American Ball Park:

It was time to circle the upper deck and take some more panoramas. First, section 516…

…section 423…

…a picture of the two of us between panoramas…

…section 430…

…and finally a panorama from the cross aisle above section 436:

That was enough of the upper deck for us, so we headed down to the field level and got this panorama from behind section 139:

Section 139 is right next to the visitors bullpen. This is what the bullpen looks like:

The bullpens were actually pretty interesting to me. A lot of stadiums where the bullpens are not side-by-side seem to put the visitors’ bullpen out in the direct sunlight and the home bullpen in a shady area. The Reds, however, did the opposite. Pretty early in the game, the visitors’ bullpen was in the shade while the Reds relievers were still in the direct sun.

There is a great standing room area in CF just to the RF side of the batters’ eye. Here is a panorama that I took from that SRO area just behind section 146:

We were in the SRO area when someone-or-other sang the National Anthem. Just behind the plate, Mr. Redlegs and Rosie were standing with hands over hearts:

Mr. Redlegs is very similar to Mr. Met. But if you ask me, Mr. Redlegs is hands down the superior mascot. The Rollie Fingers ‘stache really sets him apart…as does his retro Reds hat.

We had seats in the direct blazing sun in RF so we started hearing that way. As we walked behind the Reds bullpen, we noticed something interesting:

Aroldis Chapman was down there signing autographs. Of all of the players at this game, Aroldis is the player with whom I most wanted Tim to get his picture. While that was out of
the question, we were hoping Chapman would sign Tim’s baseball from Tony Sipp. Soon after we arrived at the stairs up above Chapman, he called it quits and walked into a door opposite the bullpen. We waited patiently. And then he reappeared. I called his name and I’m pretty sure that he only stopped because he saw Tim.

When Chapman stopped below us, he was holding a Gatorade-type bottle in one hand and he motioned for me to toss the Sipp baseball down to him. At this point, he had the drink in one hand and the baseball in the other hand, he motioned for me to toss down our pen. I figured he would just let it hit the ground and then pick it up. But he showed some major hand-eye coordination by catching the pen at hip level with his index finger. It was very impressive.

After he signed the ball and tossed us the ball and pen, I shouted out a big “Gracias, Aroldis!” That put a huge smile on his face. During this interaction (and while previously watching him signing autographs), we were probably 10 feet above Chapman’s head and it was impossible to chat with him. Nevertheless, it was clear that the guy conveys a ridiculously warm/nice/pleasant attitude. He really seemed like a great guy.

Finally, it was time for the game to start. We headed to the Skyline Chili stand right behind section 103 and grabbed some nachos and a cheese coney…

…and then we headed down to our seats in section 103. This was our view from section 103, row C, seats 13-14:

It was crazy hot in our seats. I could tell that we wouldn’t be able to stay in these seats for too long, which was unfortunate because they were great seats. But I knew we’d last at least a couple innings because Tim was going to town on our big pile of nachos:

It was good to see the Reds play again. We haven’t seen them since 2008, Griffey’s last year with the Reds. During his time in Cincinnati, I watched tons and tons of Reds games. They have a lot of new players since then, and a lot of players that were there in 2008, but have really matured over the past several years. Like this guy…

…2010 N.L. MVP Joey Votto. In that at bat, Votto is about to ground out in the first inning.

This was a low scoring game. The pitching match-up was Fausto Carmona vs. Homer Bailey. We sat in our assigned seats through the second inning and the score was 0-0.

We were overheating (well, Tim was), so we headed to the standing room area in RCF which is set up as a big misting station. It really felt amazing in there. We stayed under the
mist-sprayers for a long time and we got soaked:

Meanwhile, former-Mariner Mickey Brantley’s son Michael Brantley hit a 3-run homerun in the top of the third inning. That would be all the runs that the Indians would score during this game, and it was all they would need to win.

While we were interested in the game, we were just as interested in seeing as much of Great American Ball Park as we could. After we were thoroughly misted, we decided to head in the opposite direction of our seats and keep exploring.

As we headed toward the 3B side concourse, we looked up and took this shot of the big toothbrush-style light stands:

We lingered in the SRO area behind section 118 for a while. It looked like this:

And then we cut through the concourse and found a nice standing room spot behind section 130:

Aside from the Brantley bomb, Homer Bailey was looking pretty good:

An inning after the homerun, Bailey had no problem retiring Brantley on a weak pop up to short stop:

We decided to wander aimlessly around the ballpark and it quickly paid dividends. We ran into both Slider (the visiting Cleveland Indians mascot) and Gapper (the “B-list” Reds mascot…or at least that is how I would rank him compared to Mr. Redlegs):

In the concourse behind home plate, there is a really cool looking Reds logo set into the floor:

And some cool (and really big) mosaic pictures on the wall…

…check out Ken Griffey, Sr. in the mosaic to the left (of course, Sr. (wearing number 30) was an instrumental part of the “Big Red Machine” back in the day). Junior has got the Hall of Fame stats, but Senior has got the rings (2 of them).

Behind section 119, there is a big staircase that is mostly blocked off and is used as a SRO area:

That’s where we were standing in the bottom of the fourth inning when Jay Bruce…

…flied out to CF. I would have got a great action shot of the Grady Sizemore and Austin Kearns running into each other just before Sizemore made the catch, but a lady walked into my pitch and totally ruined it. Booo!

We decided to stop by at this little bouncy house/slide thingy…

…on our way to the very impressive Reds team store:

Two notes: in the upper right picture, that is a game-used Dusty Baker jersey Tim is pointing to with his thumb and in the bottom right picture Tim is throwing a one-seamer on the
baseball seams on the floor of the team store.

Upstairs in the game-used area, we found this cool old Big Red Machine black-and-white photo on the wall…

…but just for a minute. We had our sights on ice cream helmets. So we headed toward the first base side concourse where we had got our ice cream helmets back in 2008. As we approached the ice cream place, Mr. Redlegs was approaching walking in the opposite direction. I asked Mr. Redlegs if he could pose for a picture with Tim. Mr. Redlegs’ handler
shut us down explaining, “we’re in a rush to get somewhere.” But Mr. Redlegs was having none of it. He leaned in and gave Tim a big hug:

Awesome! Thanks, Mr. Redlegs!

The ice cream helmet line was ridiculous. It was as if every fan at the game was in line. We were in line for at least a full inning. But when we got to the front of the line, it was worth the wait. They had about 6 (maybe 8) toppings, and they were free and unlimited!

We both got twist soft serves. Tim got smashed up M&M’s with whipped cream and a cherry (which he got specifically to give to me) and I got smashed up Reese’s pieces. Delicious.

We reported back to our seats (well, our section at least) to eat our ice cream in the hot sun:

Just for kicks, we got this shot of Tim smiling with a belly full of ice cream:

It was still too hot to stay in our seats for too long. So we headed back to the misting SRO in RCF. On our way, we noticed that the Reds had a reliever warming up in the bullpen:

As I watched the game from the front of the SRO area, Tim whipped a wet wipe (from ice cream face clean up) around in the sunny mist trying to make rainbows in the mist:

It is pretty interesting watching the game from this SRO area. Sometimes it looks like you are watching the game on a HD television. But at other times, it looks like you are watching it through a thick fog (or mist) or a light fog:

That’s our buddy Tony Sipp pitching in those last two pictures. He gave up a solo homerun to Joey Votto, but still earned a “hold.”

Here is what it looked like in the SRO area behind section 145 when the mist was blowing in the opposite direction:

We were going to stay at a hotel 3.5 hours north in Toledo, Ohio after this game. So we decided to head over to the SRO areas behind home plate to watch the end of the game. The plan was to make a quick exit once the game ended.

With the score at 3-1 Indians, it was still anyone’s game as the Reds pitched to the Indians in the top of the ninth:

While we were in position, I figured I better get a shot looking into the Indians dugout. Here is what it looked like:

The Reds needed two runs in the bottom of the ninth and they had the heart of their order coming to the plate. With one out and one on base, Brandon Phillips couldn’t get anything going:

Phillips struck out for the second out of the inning.

Joey Votto batted next and lined a single to leftfield on this inside-out swing:

With the tying runs on base, Scott Rolen came to bat with two outs as the potential winning run. But he struck out to end the game.

Indians win 3-1.

On our way out the of the ballpark, Tim did a “rounding second” pose on the “statue” base near by the Ted Kluszewski statue:

We also got a couple fake batting poses to try to recreate a picture that we took outside Great American Ball Park in 2008:

Although we missed a lot of the game because of all of the exploring we did around the ballpark, we had a great time.

And the great time didn’t stop just because we had a 3.5 hour drive ahead of us. It was the night of July2nd and people were out in full force lighting off their own fireworks demonstrations. Tim had a great time watching the fireworks and didn’t fall asleep until after 11:00 p.m., right we pulled up to our hotel.

By the way, all of the links take you to the game entries that correspond with the framed pictures.

Also, I guess I should mention two more things: In the 8″ x 10″ picture of Tim just left of center, Tim is standing in Rittenhouse Square in Center City Philadelphia, just before his first game at Citizens Bank Park (his second game of his life).

In the 8″ x 10″ picture just right of center, that is Ken Griffey, Jr. holding a sign that says “Hi Todd.” My mom had him pose for that picture on his first day of Spring Training in 2008 (literally, his first day back in a Mariners uniform) and my folks gave it to me for my birthday.

Its good to finally be caught up with my frames. However, soon the 2010 season will start and we are set to add Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium Not of Los Angeles, Petco Park, AT&T Park and the Oakland-Alameda County Colesium. And, I’d really like to get to Comerica Park, but right now it is a long shot for 2010.

There you go. That is every NL panoramic ballpark view I have created and posted on our blog so far. I love doing these, so check back in the future and there will be some new panaramics mixed in with these one.

Last August, I did an entry summarzing The (First Annual) Great Cook Grandfather-Father-Son Baseball Road Trip. The purpose of doing so was to give some background and context for the Second Annual Roadtrip that took me, Tim and my dad through Chicago, Minnesota and Milwaukee in August 2009. Those entries were just a combination of emails I sent to family members while we were on our first roadtrip. Now, its time to do actual game updates for those four games.

After I got off work on August 14, 2008, my dad (Jim), Tim and I packed into the car and drove to Washington, Pennsylvania where we spent the night at a KOA. Over the next five days, we would visit Great American Ball Park in Cinncinati, the Louisville Slugger factory in Kentucky, Progessive Field in Cleveland, PNC Park in Pittsburgh, and Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

We woke up on the morning of August 15, 2008, and packed up our stuff to head to Great American Ball Park…

…as my dad packed his stuff, Tim stomped around the campground exploring and hit some whiffle balls off of his Tee.

I’d been watching the Reds on TV since Griffey was traded to Cincinnati, so I knew exactly where we had to go for dinner before the game…

…Skyline Chili was right on the way as we walked from our hotel to the ball park. If you like cheddar cheese, this is the place for you.

Now, in the grand scheme of all of the new stadiums, I had heard that Great American Ball Park was nothing special. But, you know what, I really liked it. Its no Camden Yards or Safeco Field, but it had a special feel of its own. In fact, I almost felt like it was a Major Leauge size minor league ball park. That’s not meant to be insulting. What I mean is that it sort fo felt *quaint* — maybe it was because we sat in the RF bleachers with the big steam boat nearby in CF and the river behind us. Anyway, I liked it a lot.

As we approached the main entrance of the ballpark, we found a statute of Ted Kluszewski and a big banner thanking Griffey for his 600th homerun…

Tim monkeyed around in the grass between Griff and Kluszewski…

…and practiced his power stroke.

Sixteen days before this game, Griffey was traded to the Chicago White Sox. We’d planned to sit right behind him in RF.

By the way, I didn’t write an entry about it because Tim wasn’t with me, but after missing seeing Griffey’s 600th homerun in Philadelphia, a buddy from high school and I saw Griff’s 601st homerun at Yankee Stadium during interleague play.

With no Griffey in sight, I was all about seeing Albert Pujols do something special in this game. As we entered the park, Albert was standing right there behind home plate speaking with Edinson Volquez…

…a few minutes later, Volquez walked into the Reds dugout just below me and Tim. All I had on me was a cheap plasticy ball we bought on our way to play catch with on the trip. Anyway, Volquez and some other unidentified Red signed it.

We headed out to the seats in RF to watch some BP. It was pretty packed out there. Tim and I squeezed into the first row and my dad hung back a row or two behind. We were having no luck. Then, on what I think was the final pitch of BP, someone hit a ball off the wall right in front of us. As it bounced off of the wall, all of the Cardinals started to run toward their dugout. But reliever Chris Perez turned around to grab that ball. He grabbed it and started running back toward the field. Then everyone yelled at him. He turned around. The 20-something guy next to us and I both pointed at Tim. Perez fired the ball over to us.

Yes!

It was the first ball Tim had got this season.

With Tim’s new baseball in hand, we headed to the concourse behind 1B and made our way over the Reds Hall of Fame:

As Team Halls of Fame go, this one probably sets the standard. It is excellent.

Along the far end of the Reds HOF (closest to the outfield and Ohio River), there is a wall of 4,256 baseballs representing Pete Rose’s record-setting career hit total.

The balls cover the wall the entire way as you ascend three flights of stairs. If you click on that picture to enlarge it, you will see that the balls are all game (or at least BP) used. They are all dirty and scuffed with bat marks. Its an excellent visual representation of Rose’s hit record.

The Reds HOF is packed with jerseys, bats, gloves, and shoes with little descriptions of the Reds Hall of Famers.

I was happy to see a Ken Griffey, Sr. jersey in there. I’m a big proponent of team Halls of Fame. I think the Baseball Hall of Fame should be reserved for the super-elite, best of the best of the best of the best. Some peopel refer to “inner circle” Hall of Famers. To me, the “inner circle” should be the entire Hall of Fame. If a player is borderline, if an “argument” mut be made for a player’s candidacy to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I think that means that player is not a Hall of Famer.

But that doesn’t mean there is no place for such players. If a player can’t make the Baseball Hall of Fame after years on the ballot. No problem, those players can still be remembered forever by the people to whom they were most important in their respective team’s hall of fame. Anyway, those are my two cents.

And anyone lucky enough to make it into the Reds HOF should be very pleased, indeed, this place is spectacular.

Check out this great picture they have on the wall of the members of the Reds HOF:

Do you see Ken Griffey, Sr! He’s almost right in the middle. And he’s not just in the Reds HOF, we’ll see him again before the end of this entry.

Like a Safeco Field, they have a fake wall where you can pretend to pick-off homeruns. Unlike Safeco Field, the Reds offer a variety of gloves from past and present. Check out the sweet piece of leather I picked in the picture below:

Hey, Ken Griffey, Jr. was represented in there as well…

…they had a little kids club house type area with little lockers with little jerseys they could wear and slides and things to climb. In another area, they had a mock *man cave* full of stuff the ultimate Reds fan my have in his den. Check out this picture of Ken Griffey, Jr. Notice anything odd?

He signed it “George K. Griffey, Jr.” I have never seen him do that before.

Soon, it was game time. I took this panaramic view from our seats in RF.

I bought these tickets literally the second they went on sale…in February or March or 2008…and the best they could give us in RF (where I was hoping Griffey might hit a homerun) was 3 rows from the top of the bleachers.

In to top of the first, Pujols popped out. But the Cards scored two runs on a homerun by Rick Ankiel.

Then, in the bottom of the first, I got this picture just as Reds rookie Chris Dickerson hit his first career homerun.

The ball landed in the Cardinals bullpen just below the glass partition to the left of the picture.

After Dickerson’s homerun, I tried to zoom in for a picture of Albert Pujols, but this is the best my old camera could do:

Next, it was time to go get some ice cream helmets. I headed out toward centerfield…

…but didn’t find any cream helmets until I made it all the way around to behind home plate. So I ended up doing a full loop of the ballpark. I’m sure the wait made Tim appreciate the ice cream even more:

I took this random shot of the LF seats and the scoreboard.

The scoreboard seems sort of short, doesn’t it? Its really wide, but not very tall at all.

After we finished our ice cream, we headed back toward home plate because I saw some ballpark artwork I wanted to photograph while I had my hands full of ice cream helmets. Here they are, two big mosaics of the .

Above is the 1869 Red Stockings, which according to Wikipedia were the first “openly professional” baseball team. Below, is the Big Red Machine from the 1970s…including short-time Mariner and father of a future Hall of Famer, Ken Griffey.

Back to the game, in the top of the third, Pujols hit a ground rule double. The first of two doubles and three total hits on the evening. By the end of the third, a bulk of the scoring for the game was done. The Cardinals were winning 4-2. Each team would score only one more run.

Late in the game, I ventured out in search of some pizza and took some more ballpark pictures. Here is Great American Ball Park from foul territory in the LF corner.

Our seats are all the way across in the top corner of the RF bleachers.

Here are two more pictures:

To the right, a view of the extra wide concourse in foul territory down the 3B line. To the left, a picture of the Cardinals bullpen. Directly across the field I have circled in yellow the big open concourse pictured to the right.

After taking that shot of the bullpen, I turned to the right at took two more pictures:

To the right, my dad in our seats up above the cardinals bullpen. To the left, I backed up a bit and got a shot showing a little more of the standing room area down the RF line.

And when we were over there, we ran into a local celebrity, Rosie Red…

…I tried to also find Mr. Redlegs for a photo-op, but he was nowhere to be found. The pictures to him above to the left are from earlier in the game.

With one out in the bottom of the ninth, the Cardinals brought in Chris Perez. He gave up one hit, but struck out two to secure the win for the Cards and the save for himself.

After the game, they shooed us out of the OF seats. He relocated into the infield seats, where I took a couple more random stadium shots…

…we got a group shot of the roadtrippers…

…and then we settled into the seats for Tim’s first firework show of his life…

…it was an amazing firework show. And an outstanding first day of our first roadtrip.

Tomorrow evening, Tim and I will fly to Chicago where we will meet up with my dad. Its time for The (Second Annual) Great Cook Father-Son-Grandson Baseball Roadtrip of 2009. I figured I’d share the story of our The (original) Great Cook Father-Son-Grandson Baseball Roadtrip of 2008 so you know the background of this grand tradition.

I only started blogging about our baseball experiences this season. Last season, I had to resort to traditional email updates to keep my wife and other family members up-to-date on our trip status. Below, I have copied and pasted those email updates with just a few of the many pictures that were originally attached to the emails. I hope you enjoy.

This season, our Road Trip will take us from Wrigley to the HHH Metrodome to Miller Park and back to the south side of Chicago for a game at U.S. Cellular Field. The last game of the Road Trip will mark an important milestone and I’m EXTREMELY excited to get this trip under way and rack up some awesome family baseball memories.

So, here is the background I promised:

[AUGUST 15, 2008]

So we are in Washington, PA at our first night KOA. The drive went well last night. Tim got whiney right at the end when we took a wrong turn and got lost for a short time. Otherwise, he did great.He wasn’t too excited to sleep in the cabin at first, but he ended up having a great night and is really enjoying the campground. He thinks the red light on the fire alarm on the ceiling of the cabin is a ladybug and he talked about it at great length last night until 12:30 am when he finally went to bed.This morning he did some exploring and then hit some baseballs. Pa and I played catch in between Tim’s hacks at the tee.Next, we’re off to Cabela’s in West Virginia so Tim can check out some live fish and dead animals. Then its on to Cincinnati where we will be in a hotel. The Reds play the Cardinals tonight and I’m hoping Pujols hits 4 homeruns.Here are some pictures.Next update tonight following the game.-Todd

[AUGUST 16, 2008]

Here are a ton of pictures from today. We arrived in Cincinnati around 3pm. Hung out at our hotel a bit. Then we hit the streets and walked to “Skyline Chili” for dinner. I got the 5-ways Chili, Dad got 2 Cheese Coneys and cheese fries, and Tim got the kid’s cheese coney meal. You might notice in the pictures, there was some cheese involved. (note, I also got non-cheese fries).Then it was off to the game. As per usual, Tim’s cuteness secured him a ball. This time, from Cardinals reliever Chris Perez, who would eventually earn a save in the game. We also got two autographs. Some dude, and Edison Volquez — a hot, up-and-coming pitcher for the Reds, you might have heard of him, he started the all-star game for the NL this season. [Note: At the time I wrote this, I was under the impression Volquez had been the starter, I’m not sure why. I’m now aware Ben Sheets was the starter…I’m not sure why.]

We then toured the Reds Hall of Fame, which is really cool. There is a lot to see and do in there. Including a pitching areas where you can pitch and someone can stick their head in a little window and call balls and strikes.

Eventually, the game started. We had nice outfield seats. The stadium is nice. Seemed small and cozy. Tim and I had some great ice cream in Reds helmets. We did a lot of walking around and seeing all the ins-and-outs of the ball park.

After the game (Cardinals won 5-3), they had a spectacular fireworkds show. I think it might have been Tim’s first. He loved it. The grande finale was one of the best i’ve seen.

Then we walked back to the hotel. Tim fell asleep on my shoulders.More tomorrow…-Todd

[AUGUST 16, 2008]

Hi, Guys. Another great day on the baseball roadtrip. We woke up in Cincinnati and got showered up. Tim had a fine day of brushing his teeth, started off with some quality morning brushing. After leaving the room and packing up the car, we headed to the free breakfast in the hotel. It hit the spot. Then it was just 100 mile drive to Louisville. Note, Cincinnati has some of the best this-way-to-the-freeway signage I’ve ever seen. There was a sign “To 75” just as we exited our hotel and another one every block for the entire mile or two that we weaved around the city before getting on the freeway.Tim did great in the car on the way down, which made the drive nice. Louisville Slugger was excellent, even though Tim was not. Tim’s theatrics began during the factory tour because little ones are not allowed to sit on dad’s shoulders in the factory (although there was nothing low hanging that would have bonked tim’s head). so, he whined a bunch in the factory. I was suprised how small the factory is. They essentially make all MLB bats (about 40% of all bats used in the MLB) on one machine. It cranks them out at rate of 30 seconds per bat. Minor League bats are made on the other side of the factory.The museum was really cool. The best item in there, in my book, was a bat Babe Ruth used the year he hit 60 homeruns. The Babe carved 21 notches around the label on the bat, one for each home run he hit with the bat before it broke. The bat is huge, as you can see in the picture when you compare it to the guy standing behind it.There was also a baseball diamon in one room. Tim loved it. They gave everyone mini-bats and Tim swung, swung, swung and ran, ran, ran (the bases) in that room. He had another melt down when we finally made him leave the room. Note, that room has a dugout, and Tim and I got an awesome picture acting like we are teammates at the top step waiting to hit.They also have two batting cages in the museum. I took two rounds. One with Ty Cobbs bat. The heaviest bat ever. Let me tell you, you notice it at the plate! The second with a Jim Thome bat, which was designed by Edgar Martinez (the guy running the cage is a huge M’s fan and picked it out for me because of the Edgar connection). Dad took one round with the Hank Aaron bat. Again, Tim had a minor meltdown when not allowed to take any hacks in the cage.We all got personalized bats. Tim and mine are with us, but Dad’s is being mailed to Edmonds. I picked black bats with silver writing to look like Griff’s bat. I got them personalized to remember the roadtrip.

Next, it was off to Brookville, OH (ten miles outside of Dayton). We’re now in our cabin at the KOA. Its a great KOA. Tim had an absolute blast. We arrived around 4:30. Tim played like crazy in the huge boat-shaped sand box. He played with tons of kids in the playset area. He sat on crazy-four-wheeler bikes you can rent. He played tons of gold with his new M’s golf set, even enlisting several neighorhooding campers (kids and adults) to golf and/or hit baseballs with him.We capped off the night with Superman Ice cream (except dad has moose tracks, I think). Then it was more quality tooth brushing. Now, lil’ Timmers is sleeping an Dad is off brushing his teeth.Oh, I forgot to mention, we BBQ’d at the cabin for dinner. Excellent BBQ’ing by dad.Oh, I also forgot a great line from this morning. I was emailing in the hotel room and Tim said something to Pa. Then, Pa said to Tim, “No, your Pa has it.” And Tim got this big huge smile on his face like something really funny just happened and he says to me, “You’re Pa!? You’re Pa!?” It was quite funny.Anyway, that’s update no. 3. Please enjoy a ton of pictures below.-Todd

[AUGUST 17, 2008]

howdy, folks. so we find ourselves at the end of another great day. we woke up in Brookville, OH this morning at about 7:30. We got the car all packed up before Tim finally woke up. By 8am, we were on the road heading to Cleveland. Tim was, once again, excellent in the car. We pulled into Cleveland by about 11:30.The game at Cleveland’s Progessive Field f/k/a Jacob’s Field was great. Our seats were in foul territory down the third base line. The Indians were playing the Angels. I never really decided who i would root for, but when the Indians won, it was alright with me.Before the game, we toured the field by foot and then Tim and I shared some nachos while Dad had some red vines. Once the game started, Tim did a nice job sitting in the seats and allowing us to watch the game. However, by the fifth, Tim was quite ready for a nap and he decided to take it on my shoulders. I ended up watching several innings standing at the top of the section behind the seats while Tim did his best job of tryng to break my neck supporting him while he napped.During Tim’s nap, I talked to a robust field attendant and a guy in the last row. The attendant mentioned that it was “kids run the bases” day and that kids would start lining up by the 7th inning to run a lap of the bases following the game. So, after his nap, Tim and I met back up with grandpa and we went and found the line. After the Indians won the game (and series), the long line started to snake its way through the bowels of Progressive Field. (I’m happy to report that it has been 19 days since the Indians’ last “lost time” on the job accident — or at least so read the sign beneath the field).Because Tim’s such a little whipper snapper, they let me run the bases with him. We had a blast. Here is the picture the Indian’s took for us to purchase: http://www.printroom.com/ViewGalleryPhoto.asp?evgroupid=0&userid=indians&tcount=62&scount=20&gallery_id=1229183&image_id=19After the game, we collected the kid’s giveaway (they do it after the game for some reason), an Indians’ art set) and then we called Colleen to mapquest directions to our next KOA.We arrived in the Cleveland/Streetsboro KOA around 5pm. Its nice, but not as happening at the Brookville KOA (which, did we mention, won KOA’s Presidential Award last year). We played in the kids’ play area, fed fish from the dock, BBQ’d and made Tim’s first smorse around his first campfire tonight. Tim had a blast and just finally got to bed.All in all, it was another excellent day of road tripping. Tomorrow, we’re off to Pittsburgh. See you then. In the meantime, check out these pictures.-Todd

[AUGUST 18, 2008]

howdy, folks. so we made it home this evening, but not before taking in another great game on the roadtrip. we cruised a quick 100 miles into Pittsburgh, PA this morning for a 12:30 match-up between the Pirates and the visiting Mets. The teams decided against taking batting practice this morning so we wondered around the park before the game and ultimately ended up down the third base line where the Pirates’ pitchers were playing catch in pairs. the ball catching opportunities were slim, but we capitalized big-time. first, a Pirate pitcher (possibly someone-or-other Nelson) threw a ball to Pa. Then, Tim and I got Pa’s ball autographed by Matt Capps (DL). Next, Pa got our pitcher taken with Matt Capps.Next, Denny Bautista threw a ball to me and Tim. Then, Tim and I got it autographed by Sean Burnett (eventual winning pitcher on the day), Tyler Yates (relief pitcher today (pre-save)), and T.J. Beam. Finally, we capped off the session with a picture with Mr. Beam.Next, we walked around the park for a bit. We even visited the first water fountain Tim ever used (last September). The water fountain is doing well.We had a bite to eat before the game and Tim konked out on my shoulders, but let me switch him to a traditional baby-holding position. He slept through all the nachos!After his nap, we got some mint chocolate chip ice cream in Pirates’ helmets. While Tim ate his (with sprinkles) sitting under our seats, a nice camera man found us and broadcast Tim for about 10-15 seconds on the jumbo tv screen in the park. It was actually our second time getting media coverage on the day. Earlier, we had our text message about the roadtrip put up on the scoreboard between the first and second levels.Our seats in the OF were excellent. But, due to the heat, we eventually relocated to the handicap accessible seats under the right field seats. It had an excellent breeze that made the end of the exciting game even better.After the game, we took a leisurely 250 mile drive back to Reading where mommy was waiting to greet and hug us.Its been a truly great baseball roadtrip. Although I have to work in the day tomorrow, the roadtrip continues tomorrow evening with a Phils vs. Nats game in Philadelphia. Should be more of the same — fun, fun, fun.See pictures attached.-Todd

[AUGUST 19, 2008]

Well, here is the final update for the big baseball roadtrip. I was back to work today before taking off early to head down to the Phillies/Nationals game. It was nice to be back in the car and on the road again after a hard days work.The Phils pulled out a much needed come from behind win. They never led until one out in the bottom of the eighth. Then they brought in Brad Lidge and he sealed the deal.I didn’t expect a big crowd so I hadn’t pre-ordered tickets. When we arrived all they had left was obstructed view and standing room tickets. We opted for obstructed view. And, you know what? You can’t see very well through a big yellow foul pole.After a couple innings behind the pole, we hit the bricks. We walked down to the team store and then got something to eat. Pa and I got “Schmidters” and Tim got the biggest chocolate soft serve with sprinkles ever to be served in the mini-Phillies helmet.Tim started complaining about the wind in the stadium and saying he wanted to go home. So we put on his sweatshirt and walked some more. Eventually, we found a landing above the left field seats and below the jumbo screen. There was a sectioned off handicap area with one on in it. Tim went in and claimed it as his playground. When a guard came to kick him out, a bunch of guys yelled at her “LET HIM PLAY!!! LET HIM PLAY!!!” So she caved to the crowd-pressure. Tim played the rest of the game in there and eventually made fast friends with his would-be ejector. She ended up giving him a Phillies hat and trying continuously to get him on the jumbo screen to no avail. He really entertained in there and by the end of the game, he no longer wanted to go home.It was a nice game to end an excellent baseball roadtrip. Here are a few pictures from tonight.Thanks for staying tuned,Todd

And that, in a nutshell, was the First Annual Great Cook Father-Son-Grandson Baseball Roadtrip of 2008. I asked my dad to come out and take this trip with us because I wanted to go to the Louisville Slugger factory. We built the rest of the trip around that. By the time we got back to the hotel room in Cincinnati after the first game, we decided the trip had to be an annual thing.

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